Shred guitar

Shred guitar or shred refers to lead electric guitar playing that relies heavily on fast passages; the act of playing fast passages on an electric guitar is termed "shredding". While one critic argues that shred guitar is associated with "... sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished and harmonic minor scales, finger-tapping and ...whammy-bar abuse", several guitar writers argue that rather than being a musical definition, it is a fairly subjective cultural term used by guitarists and enthusiasts of guitar music. It is usually used with reference to hard rock and heavy metal guitar playing, where it is associated with rapid tapping solos and special effects such as whammy bar "dive bombs". The term is sometimes used with reference to playing outside this idiom, particularly country, jazz fusion, blues, and some modern variants of bluegrass.

Playing techniques

Dave Celentano's book Secrets of Shred Guitar argues that "...the secrets of shred", include "sweep, alternate and tremolo picking; string skipping; multi-finger tapping; legato, [and] trills." The instructional book Guitar Shred includes exercises on "...Speed Building, Legato, Tapping, [and] Sweep Picking." The GuitarPlayer.com reviewer of the book Shred! claims that the book covers the "...techniques shredders need to know—sweep picking, tapping, legato playing, whammy bar abuse, speed riffing, [and] thrash chording". Shred guitarists also use two- or three-octave scales or modes, played ascending and descending at a fast tempo. This run or lick can be played by individually picking all, or a selection, of the notes, using techniques such as alternate picking or economy picking. Alternatively, the lick can be played by multiple-picking notes (tremolo picking), or picking just the first or second note of a string followed by a rapid succession of hammer-ons and/or pull-offs (legato).

Sweep picking is used to play extremely rapid arpeggios across the fretboard (sometimes on all strings). The tapping technique is used to play rapid flourishes of notes or to play arpeggios or scalar patterns using pure legato with no picking. Various techniques are used to perform passages with wide intervals, and to create a flowing legato sound. Some performers make complex combinations of tapping and sweep picking.

History

In 1974, the German band Scorpions used their new guitarist Ulrich Roth for their album Fly to the Rainbow, for which the title track features Roth performing "...one of the most menacing and powerful whammy-bar dive bombs ever recorded". A year later, Roth's solo guitar playing for the album In Trance "...would become the prototype for shred guitar. Everything associated with the genre can be found on this brilliant collection of songs - sweep-picked arpeggios, diminished minor harmonic scales, finger-tapping and ...jaw-dropping whammy-bar abuse". In 1979, Roth left Scorpions to begin his own power trio, named "Electric Sun"; his debut album Earthquake contained "...heaps of spellbinding fret gymnastics...and nimble-fingered classical workouts." In 1978, a "heretofore unknown guitarist named Eddie Van Halen" from Los Angeles released "'Eruption', a blistering aural assault of solo electric guitar" which featured rapid "tapping", which "had rarely been heard in a rock context before." Chris Yancik argues that it is this "record, above any other, that spawned the genre of Shred." Randy Rhoads, and Swedish guitarist Yngwie Malmsteen, and Chris Impellitteri incorporated classical influences with complex guitar compositions.

GuitarPlayer.com's article "Blast Into Hyperspace With The Otherworldly Power Of Shred" reviews the book Shred! and states that the pioneers were "Eddie Van Halen, Al Di Meola, and Ritchie Blackmore; iconic ’80s players like Yngwie Malmsteen, George Lynch, and Randy Rhoads; and contemporary guitarists like Dimebag Darrell." This fast playing style combined with the heavily distorted tone of heavy metal music resulted in a new nickname, "shred" . Progressive rock, heavy metal, hard rock, and jazz fusion have all made use of and adapted the style successfully over the past two and a half decades. In general, however, the phrase "shred guitar" has been traditionally associated with instrumental rock and heavy metal guitarists. This association has become less common now that modern, evolved forms of metal have adopted shredding as well. In the 1990s, its mainstream appeal diminished with the rise of grunge and nu metal, both of which eschewed flashy lead guitar solos. Nevertheless, underground acts like Shawn Lane and Buckethead developed the genre further.

In 2003, Guitar One Magazine voted Michael Angelo Batio the fastest shredder of all time.

Equipment

Shred guitar players often use electric solidbody guitars such as Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, Kramer, Carvin, Jackson, Schecter, B.C. Rich or ESP. Shred style guitarists often use locking tremolo systems, which stay more in tune when used for "dive bombing"-style sound effects. Some shred guitarists use elaborately-shaped models by B.C. Rich or Dean, as well as modern versions of classic radical designs like Gibson's Flying V and Explorer models. Guitars with double-cutaways give performers easier access to the higher frets. Some shred guitarists, such as Scorpions' Ulrich Roth, have used custom-made tremolo bars and developed modified instruments, such as Roth's "Sky Guitar, that would greatly expand his instrumental range, enabling him to reach notes previously reserved in the string world for violins."

These diagrams illustrate how a Floyd Rose tremolo system works: Figure 1 shows the tremolo bar in its resting position, which means that the pitch of the strings is not changed; Figure 2 shows the bar being substantially depressed, which creates a drop in pitch nicknamed the "dive bomb"; Figure 3 shows the "whammy bar" being pulled upwards, which increases the pitch of the note or chord being played.

Some shred guitar players use guitars with seven, eight, or twelve strings to allow a greater range of notes, or even double guitars for simultaneous left and right handed playing. Most shred guitar players use a range of effects such as distortion and compression to facilitate the performance of shred techniques such as tapping, hammer-ons, and pull-offs, and to create a unique tone. Often, shred-style guitar players use high-gain vacuum tube amplifiers such as Marshall, Carvin, Peavey, Mesa Boogie, ENGL, Laney, Hughes & Kettner, Krank, and Randall.